Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Top Ten Tuesday - Top Ten Books I Almost Put Down But Didn't

This week's topic isTop Ten Books I Almost Put Down But Didn't. There's a mix here; some books I liked, some I didn't:

Basajaun
by Rosemary Van Deuren - Oh, how I wish I had put this one down! I
knew it was going to be bad almost from the first page when I saw that
the author didn't know how to write grammatically correct dialogue. But
then the plot ended up being so weird (and not in a good way) that I
just couldn't find anything to like about this one -- aside from the
cover. I think it was one of the first self-published books I'd ever
read... and it made me extremely wary of all others.

Every Day
by David Levithan - When the teenagers had an outburst of yelling in a public place, I was immediately reminded of why I hated Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (which I never finished). I was worried that Every Day's
characters were going to turn into shrill, annoying brats... but
(luckily) that one incident wasn't representative of the whole book. I
did end up finishing this one, and while I'm not sorry I did, I wasn't
that impressed.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J. K. Rowling - I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan. I really enjoyed the first three books, but after that I didn't enjoy them quite as much. They got long and bloated, and I felt like there was a distinct lack of editing. By the time I got to the final book in the series, my rating for each subsequent book had dropped. It actually took me quite a while to get through HP7... but after reading all the other books in the series, it seemed a shame to leave it unfinished, so I pushed through.

If I Stay
by Gayle Forman - This book almost got put down at the very beginning.
I'd been wanting to read it for so long, since the story sounded
amazing. But the incredibly disturbing and gory accident scene almost
made me stop. If I hadn't bought the hardcover, I might've just let
this one go. But I felt like I had to keep reading. In the end, I was pretty disappointed.

Inside Out & Back Again
by Thanhha Lai - I didn't realize this was a novel written in verse
until after I'd downloaded it from the library. I vaguely remember
trying (and failing) to get through a verse novel years earlier. But,
to my surprise, I really enjoyed this one. Verse novels are now a new
favourite of mine.

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë - In my first year of university, I was assigned
this book in English class. We'd just been forced to read Henry
Fielding's Joseph Andrews,
quite possibly the most boring book of all time. I didn't actually
read it; I wrote the required essays using Coles Notes. When we were
next assigned Jane Eyre, I'd lost all confidence in the teacher
and her book recommendations. I wasn't sure I even wanted to read this
one. But I picked it up and gave it a try, and was sucked in
immediately. It's now one of my favourite classics.

More Than This
by Patrick Ness - The main reason I kept going with this book was
because I kept hearing about how great the author was. I assumed there
would be some sort of twist or awesome payoff, and the author would be
redeemed. Unfortunately, that's not the way it turned out. I very
nearly gave up on this one when it took the main character a couple of pages (on my
e-book app, anyway) to decide whether or not to go through a doorway.
Sometimes books are just too slow for my taste; this was one of them.
But since I'd gotten a good way into the book before I started having my misgivings, I figured I might as well finish.

Sophie's World
by Jostein Gaarder - I actually quite enjoyed this book when all was said and done. However, I did get bogged down at one point in the story and lost interest for a while. I eventually picked it back up again and made it through the ending... and I'm glad I did!

A Tale of Two Castles
by Gail Carson Levine - Usually, I can depend on Gail Carson Levine for
a good fairytale-esque story. However, I think this book is one of her
weaker ones. While the beginning was good, there was a point in the
story where everything really lagged and I almost gave up. I'm glad I
didn't, because the story got going again at a good pace and had a
decent ending. While it's not my favourite book by this author, it was
still quite enjoyable and I'm glad I finished it.

The Unwritten Girl
by James Bow - I read almost the whole book and then took a break of over a month before finishing the last chapter. I ended up really disliking this one; I'm kind of sorry I spent as much time on it as I did.

4 comments:

Good list, while I do love Harry Potter I always felt like I had to force myself to read the books I'm currently only on book five and have been for a couple of years now since I'm also intimidated by 870 something page count.